Author: Brian S McGowan, PhD

BACKGROUND:
Despite thousands of publications over the past 90 years on the assessment of teaching effectiveness, there is still confusion, misunderstanding, and hand-to-hand combat on several topics that seem to pop up over and over again on listservs, blogs, articles, books, and medical education/teaching conference programs. If you are measuring teaching performance in face-to-face, blended/hybrid, or online courses, then you are probably struggling with one or more of these topics or flashpoints.
AIM:
To decrease the popping and struggling by providing a state-of-the-art update of research and practices and a “consumer’s guide to trouble-shooting these flashpoints.”
METHODS:
Five flashpoints are defined, the salient issues and research described, and, finally, specific, concrete recommendations for moving forward are proffered. Those flashpoints are: (1) student ratings vs. multiple sources of evidence; (2) sources of evidence vs. decisions: which come first?’ (3) quality of “home-grown” rating scales vs. commercially-developed scales; (4) paper-and-pencil vs. online scale administration; and (5) standardized vs. unstandardized online scale administrations. The first three relate to the sources of evidence chosen and the last two pertain to online administration issues.
RESULTS:
Many medical schools/colleges and higher education in general fall far short of their potential and the available technology to comprehensively assess teaching effectiveness. Specific recommendations were given to improve the quality and variety of the sources of evidence used for formative and summative decisions and their administration procedures.
CONCLUSIONS:
Multiple sources of evidence collected through online administration, when possible, can furnish a solid foundation from which to infer teaching effectiveness and contribute to fair and equitable decisions about faculty contract renewal, merit pay, and promotion and tenure.

via Top five flashpoints in the assessment of teaching… [Med Teach. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.

As medical education research continues to diversify methodologically and theoretically, medical education researchers have been increasingly willing to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about the form, content and function of medical education. In this AMEE guide we describe historical, discourse and text analysis approaches that can help researchers and educators question the inevitability of things that are currently seen as ‘natural’. Why is such questioning important? By articulating our assumptions and interrogating the ‘naturalness’ of the status quo, one can then begin to ask why things are the way they are. Researchers can, for example, ask whether the models of medical education organization and delivery that currently seem ‘natural’ to them have been developed in order to provide the most benefit to students or patients–or whether they have, rather, been developed in ways that provide power to faculty members, medical schools or the medical profession as a whole. An understanding of the interplay of practices and power is a valuable tool for opening up the field to new possibilities for better medical education. The recognition that our current models, rather than being ‘natural’, were created in particular historical contexts for any number of contingent reasons leads inexorably to the possibility of change. For if our current ways of doing things are not, in fact, inevitable, not only can they be questioned, they can be made better; they can changed in ways that are attentive to whom they benefit, are congruent with our current beliefs about best practice and may lead to the production of better doctors.

via Looking back to move forward: using history, disco… [Med Teach. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.